Erosion, aesthetics, decommissioning funding and the ongoing reproductive health of spotted salamanders all played a role in the final design of Vermont's latest large-scale solar array.
The state Public Service Board has granted a certificate of public good for construction of a 2.2-megawatt photovoltaic facility off Route 30 in Bondville, a village in the town of Winhall.
The approval comes after the developer, Vermont Solar Farmers LLC, reached agreements with state environmental regulators and with residents near the proposed project.
“We're pretty sensitive to Vermont issues ... the local issues, the state issues. That, for us, is a starting point,” said Will Jerome, Vermont Solar Farmers' managing member. “The idea was to communicate as clearly as we could and address any issues.”...
Route 30 to be closed for bridge work on Oct. 30 BRATTLEBORO - On Friday, Oct. 30, Route 30 will be closed from approximately 5 a.m. to 8 p.m. when contractors pour concrete for the new Interstate 91 bridge in a location above Route 30. Local traffic will be...
Dartmouth professor Paul Whalen will consider the importance of facial expressions and how the brain reads them in a talk at Brooks Memorial Library in Brattleboro on Nov. 4 at 7 p.m. His talk, “Face to Face with the Emotional Brain,” is part of the Vermont Humanities Council's First...
On Sunday, November 1, the Williamsville Eatery will host a musical soiree, featuring dinner and a concert of original music by Quantum Hitch. The renovated interior of the old Williamsville General Store will contribute to an intimate concert experience. Because seating is limited to 25, tickets will be sold on a first-come, first-serve basis. Tickets are $30, which includes the music and an Eatery meal. “The cover price will help The Eatery to honor their commitment to pay a fair...
Officials from both Rockingham and Bellows Falls have discussed issues around the provision, cost, and delivery of emergency services. At a Sept. 29 joint meeting of the Village Trustees and the Rockingham Selectboard, the two boards tabled a discussion on whether Rockingham and Bellows Falls should enter into a mutual aid agreement with Charlestown, N.H., which opted out of Southwestern New Hampshire District Fire Mutual Aid, based in Keene, N.H., and is using its own dispatcher. At issue is the...
Vermont officials are taking their nuclear-decommissioning concerns to Washington. More specifically, state Public Service Commissioner Chris Recchia and state Nuclear Engineer Tony Leshinskie are headed later this month to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's headquarters in Rockville, Md., to meet with a key NRC official. Recchia, a frequent and vocal critic of the commission's stances on Vermont Yankee decommissioning, expects to bring up a variety of topics but might focus on a key concern: How to provide more opportunities for state...
College news • Michaela Shea-Gander, a graduate of Brattleboro Union High School attending Denison University in Granville, Ohio as a member of the Class of 2019, received the Denison Founders Scholarship. The Denison Founders Scholarship is based on academic achievement, leadership and personal merit. Transitions • R.T. Hamilton Brown has been hired by the Brattleboro Development Credit Corp. as the regional manager of the Windham County Economic Development Program (WCEDP). His primary role is outreach and opportunity development in the...
Vermont Theatre Company announces its next production, Neil Simon's comedy California Suite, Nov. 6 through 15, at Dummerston's Evening Star Grange. California Suite, often seen as a complement to Simon's East Coast Plaza Suite, is a program of four vignettes, each telling a different tale of the marital tribulations of various visitors to a Los Angeles hotel room. “The combination of Simon's penetrating wit and incisive insight into everyday human behavior, along with a stellar cast and veteran director, make...
Youth Services recently hired Gina Graciano as a match specialist for its Big Brothers Big Sisters' site and community-based mentoring programs. Graciano comes to the agency's mentoring program with similar experience providing support to matches and families for Big Brothers Big Sisters in Manchester, N.H. She also works part-time as a school counselor. Site-based Big Brothers Big Sisters programs take place during lunchtime hours or after-school at numerous elementary schools in Windham County while the adult mentors in the community-based...
The owner of The Hermitage Club must pay more than $72,700 for damaging three miles of trail in the Green Mountain National Forest. The U.S. Attorney's office in Vermont said James Barnes of Wilmington has agreed to pay $25,000 in civil fines and $47,761 in restitution for ordering work on a portion of the Deerfield Ridge Trail in November 2012. In addition to the fact that the project was unauthorized, federal officials said the work “was not done to professional...
The Jamaica Memorial Library has been awarded two grants from The Vermont Community Foundation. These grants support endeavors that “contribute to the betterment and vitality of the Brattleboro area.” In early 2016, these funds along with private donations, will be used to create a bathroom within the library building. This will affect the number of patrons who visit the library as well as their ability to stay in the library for pleasure, meetings, and research for longer periods of time...
Town residents soon will have a chance to weigh in on a proposed natural-gas power plant that could be constructed somewhere near Vermont Yankee. A public meeting has been scheduled for Nov. 10 at Vernon Elementary School. Vernon Planning Commission, which is hosting the session, expects to soon set a start time for the session - it will be either 6 or 6:30 p.m. - and notify residents via flier. Officials are hoping for a good turnout that will give...
The NewBrook Fire and Rescue Department, which serves the towns of Newfane and Brookline, will hold its 13th annual Peace & Goodwill Dinner and Silent Auction Saturday, Dec. 5, at the firehouse located on Route 30. Doors will open at 5:30 p.m. with the dinner and silent auction bidding beginning at 6 p.m. Ticket prices are: age 13 and up - $12; Age 6-12-$6; Age 5 and under - free. This annual event is a fund raiser for the all...
The United Way of Windham County is seeking volunteers to prepare tax returns, schedule appointments, and greet participants for the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance Program (VITA). The VITA program helps families keep more of their earned income through free federal and state tax return preparation by trained volunteers. The program runs weekly in Brattleboro from February through April 2016, with daytime, evening and Saturday volunteer shifts available. No previous experience is required and free training is provided. Last year, 16...
In conjunction with the annual Horribles Parade, more than 20 downtown businesses will be staying open late, handing out candy to Trick or Treaters from 5 - 7 p.m. as part of the first-ever Downtown Brattle-boo, sponsored by the Downtown Brattleboro Alliance, on Oct. 31, Halloween night. The Alliance hopes to line Main Street with Jack o'Lanterns on Halloween Night. Drop off your carved pumpkins from noon to 5 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 31, at the River Garden on Main...
Filmmaker Mike Turner's The Way We Talk is an exploration of what it feels like to be a person who stutters. This film is no dry investigation of therapies. Nor is it an “inspiring” story of the usual how-I-suffered-with-and-then- overcame-my-disability sort. There is not much patting oneself on the back (or, conversely, hand-wringing). “Why me?” though, a plaintive question that repeatedly comes up in the filmmaker's narrative, is something of a subtext of The Way We Talk. Turner, himself a...
As towns around the state begin to come to terms with Act 46, the school governance bill passed by the Legislature in the 2015 session, school boards and concerned townspeople have been meeting to share information. [See “School mergers debated in Windham County,” Sept. 30.] Putney's School Board joined the Selectboard during the latter's Oct. 8 regular meeting to discuss Act 46, and to promote better communications between the two bodies. “The state is incentivizing consolidation,” School Board member Richard...
Water Street site access granted PUTNEY - At the Oct. 8 regular meeting, the Putney Selectboard granted Environmental Compliance Services' request to access Water Street, which is on town property, to complete an environmental assessment. Patricia Mousel, property owner of the Mountain Paul's General Store site, has contracted with ECS to test the well on the site for petroleum. Town Manager Cynthia Stoddard said she conferred with Town Attorney Lawrence Slason, who said ECS needs permitting and a plan for...
It takes a village to end homelessness. Ensuring that the whole Brattleboro community is housed, fed, and safe will take system-wide solutions. “It will be a community solved problem and not one agency coming to solve it,” said Changeworks co-chair Steve West. Changeworks is the advocacy and action program within the Groundworks Collaborative, the collaborative launched earlier this year after the merger of Morningside Shelter and the Brattleboro Area Drop In Center. West added that income inequality also puts pressure...
Let's do the Time Warp ... again! The Latchis Theatre hosts its annual showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show on Thursday, Oct. 29. The event starts with live music by Lobotomobile at 9 p.m., followed by the film at 10 p.m. This 1975 musical comedy horror film directed by Jim Sharman has remained a cult favorite since it was released 40 years ago. The screenplay was written by Sharman and Richard O'Brien, based on the 1973 musical stage production,
I'm under no illusion that doctors know everything. My mom died in 1986 at 66, largely as the result of an overdose of a drug administered in an emergency room. And my dad - a doctor - died in 1995 after being misdiagnosed for three weeks at Brigham and Women's Hospital by colleagues who were really looking out for him. So I love to read anything that questions Western medicine's typical response to the world. I remember being taken to...
Highway Dept. to replace guard rails, build new salt shed GRAFTON - A proposal was approved on Oct. 5 to replace 1,500 feet of guardrails on Route 121 by Lafayette Highway for $16,184.50. The price represents a cost reduction, because the Highway Department will be using some of the town's materials. The new salt shed construction bid was awarded to Iron Horse, which returned a proposal of $30,500, which includes the installation. No time line for construction has been submitted...
There is a considerable amount of misinformation floating around about the impact of Act 46 on school choice, which I would like to address directly. But first, I need to start with a point of clarification on terminology. Folks in our area are very familiar with the concept of school choice, and know exactly what we are talking about when we speak of “school choice.” It is a tradition that many of our communities have had for well over a...
Fifty-four years ago, a giant moved into West Townshend. There's no doubt that the hulking Townshend Dam has provided benefits over that half century, from large-scale flood protection - a 2011 estimate said the structure had prevented $137.1 million in flood damage - to a popular outdoor recreational area. But these days, Townshend officials aren't sure the dam is living up to its billing. A small payment in lieu of taxes for the dam property hasn't changed in decades, and...
The Brattleboro American Legion Band took third-place honors at the organization's national concert band competition in Baltimore at the end of August. A press release reports that the band received a standing ovation during the concert portion, and the next day, its members represented Vermont in a two-hour parade along the city's Inner Harbor, capping off the Legion's annual national convention. “Forty-three band members played the concert in Baltimore, and 35 of them marched in the parade,” American Legion Band...
Folk and indie rock musicians will perform live on a chartered train from Bellows Falls to Rutland this fall during the first rail trip of its kind in Vermont. Roots on the Rails, based in Bellows Falls, will present The Green Mountain Express on Nov. 6-8. Legendary Texas songwriter Jimmie Dale Gilmore, joined by Syd Straw of Weston, Winterpills of Northampton, Mass., and Meadows Brothers of Chester, Conn., will provide a powerful lineup of music on a four-car vintage train...
In the recent Academy Award-winning movie, Whiplash, a student is terrorized to learn how to play jazz by his teacher at a prestigious music school. Eugene Uman, artistic director of the Vermont Jazz Center (VJC), says he has not seen the movie, but has read all about it. He believes that the bullying in Whiplash couldn't be further from what happens at the VJC. “At the Center, we want to nurture the potential in both our audiences and students,” says...
The joy of the Brattleboro Colonels over their first Division I playoff game since 2006 turned to ashes last Friday night after one of the screwiest ends to a high school football game you'll ever see. After taking a 14-0 lead over the fifth-seeded Champlain Valley Redhawks, the fourth-seeded Colonels were upset, 19-16, at Natowich Field in a first-round contest that wasn't decided until the very last play of the game. In the first quarter, it looked like the Colonels...
A concert featuring Sparky and Rhonda Rucker will take place at the West Brattleboro house of George Carvill and Ellie Weiss on Thursday, Nov. 5, starting at 7 p.m. Sparky did many house concerts in the area in the 1970s. Since then he married Rhonda and the two tour the world from their home base in Tennessee, singing songs and telling stories from the American tradition. The house is small, so RSVPs are required to get the address and parking...
The history and popularity of the Land Rover motor vehicle will be on display as Jim Macri presents a talk at Main Street Arts on Thursday, Oct. 29 entitled “The Land Rover: The Iconic Vehicle.” The talk in the Taste of the Arts, Tales from the Community series will be preceded by a display in front of Main Street Arts, beginning at 5 p.m., of Macri's High Meadow Farm collection of the British vehicles. Recognized the world over, it is...
The Estey Organ Museum will host an Organ Spooktacular with the Phantom on Friday, Oct. 30, at 7 p.m., at the First Baptist Church, 190 Main St. The event will feature two shortened silent films, The Phantom of the Opera and Nosferatu. The Phantom features Lon Chaney, and Nosferatu features Max Schreck in the lead role. Both will receive accompaniment on the church's Estey pipe organ. In addition there will be live performances of songs from Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical,
On Sunday, Nov. 1, at 4 p.m., at Centre Congregational Church, the Brattleboro Music Center presents Music School faculty member and cellist Paul Cohen, and guest pianist Michael Arnowitt. The concert program includes Bach's Suite for Violoncello Solo in C Major BWV 1009; Brahms' Sonata for Piano and Cello in E Minor Op. 38; Beethoven's Sonata for Cello and Piano Op. 102, No. 2; and three solo piano pieces by Brahms. Cohen studied cello with Fritz Magg and Janos Starker...
As public officials and experts gathered here to talk about the impact of nuclear-plant closures, there was a common theme: uncertainty. That word applies to the surprisingly scattershot federal nuclear decommissioning regulations. Speakers at the Oct. 21 conference at the University of Massachusetts Amherst used the words “mess” and “travesty” to describe the lack of clear guidelines. But there's also much uncertainty over the ways in which a shutdown affects a community, given all the factors that make a nuclear...
Three southeastern Vermont 4-H'ers recently returned from last month's Eastern States Exposition in West Springfield, Mass., where they competed in various horse events. Karli Knapp, Townshend; Holly Weglarz, Hartland; and Kassidy Wyman, Cambridgeport were among the 16 4-H equestrians chosen from across the state to represent University of Vermont (UVM) Extension 4-H at “Big E” horse competitions, held Sept. 23-27. The teens competed against 4-H'ers from the other five New England states in a number of different contests. Knapp, a...
The German film Before the Last Curtain Falls, directed by Thomas Wallner, won't be to everyone's taste. The film takes a heart-wrenching look at a group of gay and transsexual performers, in their 60s and 70s, who share their personal stories: coming out as gay, surgical procedures for some, and the challenges of present-day relationships. The film requires the audience to explore a world still not widely known or understood, even in today's culture, where same-sex marriage is legal and...
The crowd grew quickly. Gubernatorial candidate Sue Minter disappeared into the crowd as she circled the small Catherine Dianich Gallery. Minter shook hands and chatted with audience members. At her elbow, Sarah McCall, Minter's campaign manager and former director of Emerge Vermont. Emerge Vermont seeks to increase the number of Democratic women elected to public office. Many people who attended the Oct. 20 meet and greet already knew Minter. They'd worked with her as a member of the Vermont House,
Opal Robinson, 15, away from home for a week and missing for days, made contact with relatives on Oct. 23 and has returned to Brattleboro. “All I know is that she's alive and OK,” her mother, Liz Robinson, said that evening, the relief in her voice palpable. Robinson and her husband, Trevor, had been staying close to home, wary about leaving for fear of missing news about their daughter. The last anyone saw Opal Robinson was when she left a...
Filmmaker Suzanne Crocker makes a confession in the first scene of her exquisitely filmed documentary All the Time in the World. “I always envisioned myself as being one of those moms who would have fresh-baked cookies and a glass of milk ready for their kids when they walked in the door after,” she says. And like most of us mothers who scramble after this unattainable ideal, she comes to realize that “there wasn't enough time for the things that really...
How many among us have not somehow, somewhere been touched by a film? For me, film is a second-generation addiction. My mother, who was born in 1917, was an early adapter of talking pictures. Mesmerized by the stars' elegance and glamour, she passed on her love of movies to me. I grew up thinking I would marry Bill Powell as the Thin Man, have a waistline as thin as Myrna Loy's, and wear gowns to sophisticated parties where I would...
A new documentary tells the story of small-town Vermont attorneys Beth Robinson and Susan Murray, who, with Boston lawyer Mary Bonauto, led the two-decade-long struggle for marriage equality that won several historic breakthroughs in LGBT rights. Directed by Jeff Kaufman, The State of Marriage profiles the remarkable men and women pioneering the national marriage equality movement through their efforts in Vermont in a grassroots campaign that changed the United States. The film show hows much of the national and international...
The fourth annual Brattleboro Film Festival (BFF) begins Friday, Oct. 30 at the Latchis Theatre on Main Street, kicking off a 10-day cinematic feast of 31 features, animated movies, short-subject films, dramas, comedies, and documentaries. The festival, which runs through Sunday, Nov. 8, is known for its strong lineup of outstanding and award-winning films, which offer “viewpoints and characters we don't often see in mainstream media,” says BFF President Merry Elder. The films are complemented by a series of events...
Cuban cinema has a rich history, and social commentary has always found a way into drama, but Cuban director Ernesto Daranas' Conducta (Behavior) catapults current filmmaking from the country into a whole new dimension. The film rumbles quietly with the subtext of the changes afoot in Cuba today. For some, these changes present new opportunities. For others, like Chala, Conducta's troubled but lovable 11-year-old protagonist in danger of slipping through the cracks, change exacerbates current problems and brings uncertainty about...
The day after screening the powerful film The Babushkas of Chernobyl, I heard a story on public radio about the rewilding of the exclusion zone surrounding the remains of the Chernobyl nuclear complex. The researcher claimed with authority that there were no human inhabitants of the 30-mile zone, one of the most radioactive areas on the planet. I was not surprised that the strong, stubborn, and nearly self-sufficient old women - approximately 100 of them -living for decades in the...
For the nation's 61 nuclear power stations, the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has policies upon policies upon policies, and then a few more policies just for good measure. Yet the nuclear industry's regulatory body hasn't developed rules and guidelines for plants' closures. By the end of a six-year span starting in 2013, six nuclear plants will have closed. Four will have opted for a 60-year decommissioning process. The NRC has resorted to releasing case-by-case exemptions and rules as plant...
A developer is proposing Vermont's largest, most-powerful wind turbine site - 28 turbines churning out nearly 97 megawatts - on a ridge in the towns of Windham and Grafton, according to new plans released Monday. With that size would come sizable economic benefits, as developer Iberdrola Renewables is estimating $285,000 in annual tax revenues for Grafton and $715,000 for Windham - more than than that town's entire budget. The project could also pump another $700,000 into the state education fund...
In the fall of 1975, members of two different recently formed Morris dancing teams, who all happened to be living in Brattleboro and Marlboro at the time, decided that they would band together to perform a sword dance and mummers play (a traditional English folk play) at the winter solstice. They established a separate entity, the Green Mountain Mummers, which had its initial outing during a snow storm on Dec. 20, 1975. Fast-forward 41 years and the group is still...
As part of its mission to create educational initiatives and spotlight issues that raise awareness of the world around us, the Brattleboro Film Festival (BFF) hosted a special free screening of the award-winning documentary film Landfill Harmonic on Oct. 16 for all Brattleboro and Vernon public-school fifth graders. The film, which takes place mainly in a Paraguayan slum, is, as its filmmakers describe, “a testament to the transformative power of music and the resilience of the human spirit.” The film...
On Oct. 6, former Vice President Al Gore gave an updated showing of his Inconvenient Truth climate change presentation at the University of Vermont. Gore commended Vermont's political leaders and the state for leading the country in the development of renewable energy, and he also told the packed audience that we “need to put a price on carbon [pollution].” Two days later, roughly 30 protesters lined busy Williston Avenue in South Burlington to protest as the Renewable Energy Vermont (REV)